‘Sleeping on it’ helps you better manage your emotions and mental health – here’s why

Instead of lying awake worrying, we’re often told to “sleep on it” when making decisions both big and small. And there’s actually a scientific basis for this advice. Sleep can influence our response to emotional situations, and helps us to manage our mental health.

To understand why sleep and emotions are so connected, it’s important to first understand what happens in the brain when we encounter something emotive.

Two main brain regions interact to create emotional responses. The first is the limbic system, which is located deep in our brain. This acts as our emotion centre, quickly evaluating a situation and helping us to decide how to react. Historically, this region may have been important for humanity’s survival, as it helps us react quickly in certain situations – if we encounter a dangerous predator, for example.

But most of the time we need to adjust our initial emotional response. This is where the second region – the prefrontal cortex – comes in. Located just behind our forehead, the prefrontal cortex helps us to increase or decrease our emotional responses as necessary. So if we see a predator (such as a bear) in the zoo, the prefrontal cortex tells us we don’t need to panic because it’s in an enclosure.

These regions need to be well-connected in order to effectively generate and adjust our emotional responses. This is where sleep comes in. When we’re sleep deprived, the connections between these areas weaken, making the reaction in the limbic system stronger. Sleep loss not only increases our reaction to stressful events during the day, it also makes these reactions harder to change. This may be particularly pronounced if you lose REM (rapid eye movement) sleep.

Studies show that getting poor sleep makes us more likely to choose less effective ways of managing our emotions which could have a knock-on effect for our mental health. Imagine you’re experiencing a difficult work problem. If you’re well rested, you are more likely to be able to effectively problem solve, fixing the issue. But if you’re sleep deprived, you might avoid dealing with the problem. Over time, this could have a negative effect on wellbeing.

Sleep is also crucial for processing and consolidating memories from our day. When we have emotional experiences, sleep both helps us remember these events and remove the associated feelings. This happens in REM sleep, when activity in most brain regions is similar to when we’re awake. By reactivating memories during REM sleep, the associated feelings can be removed from the content of the memory. This is why “sleeping on it” really can help you feel better in the morning. Indeed, studies have shown that, over time, improving sleep can lead to less anxiety, depression, and stress, and increased life satisfaction.

A good night’s sleep

If you want to keep your emotions and mental health in check, here are the best ways to get a good night’s sleep:

1. Maintain a consistent bedtime and wake time – even on your days off. This helps your body clock get into a routine, improving your sleep. Having a big shift in sleep time between your work and free days is known as “social jetlag”, which can be associated with increased anxiety.

2. Seek out natural light in the morning and avoid blue light in the evening. Our body clock is strongly affected by light. It impacts a part of the brain called the supra-chiasmatic nucleus, which releases a sleep hormone called melatonin. Getting natural light in the morning helps us to suppress melatonin, which improves our mood and makes us feel more alert. The blue light found in electronic devices also minimises melatonin. This means that using electronics in the evening can result in it taking longer for us to feel sleepy. So we recommend that you turn them off or set them to “night time mode” an hour before you go to bed.

3. Avoid certain substances – such as alcohol, caffeine and nicotine. Caffeine and nicotine are stimulants, which can interfere with our body’s drive to sleep. It’s best to avoid these, particularly in the afternoon and evening as our body gets ready for sleep. Alcohol also changes the structure of our sleep, making us more likely to wake up during the night. Studies also show using alcohol daily can decrease sleep quality, especially for people with anxiety.

4. Allow yourself time to wind down before bed. Make sure your bedroom is comfortable, cool, quiet and dark to minimise chances of being disturbed. Before bed, try using relaxation or mindfulness techniques, which have been linked with both better sleep quality and better overall mental health.

Getting a good night’s sleep can work wonders for improving our mental health. But it doesn’t stop there. Sleeping well can also improve our memory, attention and other thought processes. It also benefits several aspects of our physical health, including our weight and heart, making sleep an important priority for all aspects of our well-being.

 

This is only for your information, kindly take the advice of your doctor for medicines, exercises and so on.   

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One type of exercise “reverses” aging’s effect on stem cells — study

As people age, they lose muscle mass and the risk of heart disease, dementia, and reduced immune function increases. As the years tick by, it becomes harder for people to bounce back from a workout, injury, or illness.

Consistent exercise can slow down this degenerative process — but a new study suggests we may not have to settle for slowing down. According to new research in mice, aerobic exercise may actually reverse aging’s effect on essential muscle stem cells involved with tissue regeneration. 

If the research translates to humans, it means jogging, swimming, cycling, and other aerobic activities can help older people recover as quickly and efficiently as their younger selves. In the far future, these results could inform the creation of a drug that de-ages muscle stem cells.

This finding was published Monday in the journal Nature Metabolism.

Researchers have known for a long time that exercise promotes healthspan, giving people extra disease-free years.

This discovery is “very different,” co-author Thomas Rando, a neurology researcher at Stanford University, tells Inverse.

“This is like taking, in a sense, a person who has already aged and acquired these diseases, and then reversed that process," Rando explains.

This study suggests that aerobic exercise can cause old cells to behave more like — and gain the characteristics of — young cells. To get there, the scientists rounded up young and old mice and gave them access to a running wheel for three weeks. Then, with a battery of tests, they analyzed how the mouse's muscle stem cells and muscle tissue responded.


They compared the mouse runners to a group of non-exercising mice who were given a locked wheel and no opportunity to run.

Within a single week, both young and old mice with the running wheels established a routine, running about 10 and 4.9 kilometers per night, respectively.

The human equivalent to the mice running wheel regime would likely be regular, aerobic exercise— swimming, running, cycling, Rando says. Not strength training or weight lifting.

After three weeks of voluntary wheel running, the mice were moved to cages without any wheels. Then, the researchers injured certain muscles and analyzed how the mice rebuilt the injured tissue.

They also transplanted muscle stem cells from old mice into other injured mice, and saw how well the cells functioned. Compared with young donor muscle stem cells, old donor muscle stem cells formed smaller and fewer fibers in the injured mice. But old muscle stem cells from exercising mice performed like young muscle stem cells, forming more fibers than non-exercising old muscle stem cells.

Overall, older mice who exercised experienced improved muscle stem cell function and accelerated muscle tissue repair.

The active, older mice didn't produce more muscle stem cells. Instead, exercise had a “rejuvenating” effect on old cells, Rando says. It triggered a Benjamin Button-effect and helped mice operate more like their younger selves.

These benefits disappeared one week after the mice stopped running, suggesting that what causes the rejuvenating effect is sustained exercise.

This implies that voluntary aerobic exercise may have benefits "above and beyond" the prevention of age-related diseases, and may actually improve tissue function directly, Rando says.

"The idea would be that that older individuals would recover faster and more efficiently like young people do in response to an injury," he explains

Surprisingly, young mice who ran the wheel did not experience improved muscle repair. This puzzled Rando and his team.

"It's as if young mice have already kind of plateaued," Rando explains. "They lose function with age and they can get back to that baseline, but it's hard to make them still better with more exercise."

Exercise’s effects on muscle stem cells and tissue repair come down to a tiny protein called cyclin D1, the study explains. Voluntary aerobic exercise restored cyclin D1 levels in dormant stem cells back to youthful levels, effectively accelerating muscle stem cell regeneration.

Discovering cyclinD1's critical role means researchers may be able to target the protein therapeutically or develop a drug that creates these positive de-aging effects, the researchers say.

But before any kind of anti-aging pill or prescribed exercise-regime comes down the pipeline, more research in humans is needed. 

Abstract: Ageing impairs tissue repair. This defect is pronounced in skeletal muscle, whose regeneration by muscle stem cells (MuSCs) is robust in young-adult animals, but inefficient in older organisms. Despite this functional decline, old MuSCs are amenable to rejuvenation through strategies that improve the systemic milieu, such as heterochronic parabiosis. One such strategy, exercise, has long been appreciated for its benefits on healthspan, but its effects on aged stem-cell function in the context of tissue regeneration are incompletely understood. Here, we show that exercise in the form of voluntary wheel running accelerates muscle repair in old mice and improves old MuSC function. Through transcriptional profiling and genetic studies, we discovered that the restoration of old MuSC activation ability hinges on restoration of Cyclin D1, whose expression declines with age in MuSCs. Pharmacologic studies revealed that Cyclin D1 maintains MuSC activation capacity by repressing TGF-β signalling. Taken together, these studies demonstrate that voluntary exercise is a practicable intervention for old MuSC rejuvenation. Furthermore, this work highlights the distinct role of Cyclin D1 in stem-cell quiescence.

This is only for your information, kindly take the advice of your doctor for medicines, exercises and so on.     

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Set the pace: Being fit and active is not a luxury but a necessity

If four things are followed — having a great aim, acquiring knowledge, hard work and perseverance — then anything can be achieved. -- A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

Survival is of the fittest. Being fit and active is not a luxury but a mere necessity to sustain a quality standard of living. Not working out because of too much work is no excuse. It is often work that leads one to lifestyle disorders, such as diabetes, blood pressure, obesity and stress. Taking an hour out to work the body is not much to ask of one’s self because health is priceless. The body demands being active and fit to sustain itself.

Everyone wants to be fit and remain so. There are, however, exceptions. Report making, assignment submission, late work hours, attending social gatherings or simply wishing to do nothing on the one day of holiday hinders one from sweating it out and getting the heart pumping. It is important to accept the fact that exercising regularly and eating right is the only way one can stay healthy.

Most of us start training programmes on a rock-solid mode. However, the curve of the graph declines after a fortnight when an excuse to quit crops up. There are ways to keep up the training regimen and achieve the kind of fitness one wants and, more importantly, can.

One can begin by accepting a fact — working out is as significant as everything else in life. It can even be said that it is as crucial as life itself. It is good health that enables one to lead a pain-free retirement life everyone often dreams of. Being fit will help you continue doing all the fun things you always wanted to do. There are people who are 60-plus and still enjoy rock climbing and trekking, simply because they worked out to beat ill health.

Realisation of this simple truth will permit one to be able to make exercise a key component in the day’s plan. Should you fail to imbibe a consistent workout programme, the enthusiasm of the first workout plan would prove futile. Here are some ways to ensure a consistent approach to workouts…

    Fix the exercise time on your schedule and follow it much as you would for your important meetings and conferences.
    Maintain a journal. Make a note of the workout timings and days on your phone’s calendar. Abide by them just as you would for an important meeting with your tax officer.
    Keep it plain and simple. It is more likely for one to adhere to a simple schedule in the long run. Should going to the gym be a task itself much as the workout, you would invariably fail to visit the gym. Identifying a gym location in the proximity of your residence or workplace will save time in travelling and not hinder family and professional obligations.
    Many commence their training with great zeal. They tend to invariably exceed their limit. In the bargain, they get too sore and fatigued. Such a workout could lead to injuries, such as tissue or muscle tear.
    Each training session should not exceed 42 minutes or else you are working on your stress hormone (cortisol) and it’s detrimental to the benefits of exercising. The body requires adequate time to rest and recover for better performance for the next session. So the most ideal approach is to set attainable and realistic goals.

It is realistic to work on short-term goals

When you’re starting out new, there will be some people who would either be with you in your new endeavour or tear you down. It is in your best interest to overlook all forms of negativity. Remember, your aim is to be fit and work towards a disease-free life. If anyone has a problem, let them deal with it.

Without a doubt one must work under a skillful, experienced, qualified fitness coach to get the best results and this should be your long-term goal. Coaches need to make sure they aren’t overloading or not adequately challenging their clients. Experienced coaches will be able to make the exercise regimen effective and enjoyable to your liking.

Rather than seeing too much into the future, it is more realistic to work on short-term goals, phase by phase, such as intermediates week (someone working out at intermediate level will see progress in four to six weeks) or monthly. Set a meaningful and practical goal that would not only be attainable but would also be powerful enough for you to overcome laziness and encourage you to train. It’s all in the mind; your mindset will determine your punctuality.

Be it in a gym or just on an open field, remember you are not exercising to lose weight. You are exercising regularly because of how you feel as a result of exercising regularly. You will get leaner and will have more energy and higher self-esteem. Exercise will boost your general health and enhance your mood because it releases two good neurotransmitters — serotonin and norphenylephrine — during training. The actual increase of endorphins occurs after an hour of high-intensity training. Endorphins are a reaction to stress that are released to decrease pain. So to truly get that release, you must get your body to a point of pain. However, the difficult part is if you put too much stress on your body, it may be counterproductive, resulting in exhaustion and irritable mood. I would suggest that you find your sweet spot. Understand and listen to your body.

A lot of people make excuses because they are being pushed out of their comfort zone. It appears that they are more apprehensive rather than being lazy. It is a mental phobia that provokes people to make an excuse. The only way to deal with it is to face the fear.

Working out is about determination; a strong resolve to be fit and healthy. You learn to embrace and appreciate the pain and soreness after a while, and your mind will generate the tale why it’s nice. The post-exercise soreness — DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness) — actually feels good and you’ll miss the DOMS once you’re regular.


this is only for your information, kindly take the advice of your doctor for medicines, exercises and so on.   
https://gscrochetdesigns.blogspot.com. one can see my crochet creations 
https://gseasyrecipes.blogspot.com. feel free to view for easy, simple and healthy recipes    
https://kneereplacement-stickclub.blogspot.com. for info on knee replacement